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Hi again,
One more brief note on resting without reference point: This point will be elaborately taught and practiced at the end of the second excellence. Please don’t worry, if it seems difficult or strange now.
Heidi
Dear Tamara,
Don’t worry if your visualization is lost, when you focus one-pontedly on taking refuge. Most important it is to feel the presence of the objects of refuge.
As for resting without reference point, I guess this may be different for everybody. But it is certainly good to allow oneself to just let go without much thinking…
Heidi
Hi again,
The white Amitayus drubchen went very well.
Coming back to free will, as I mentioned briefly last time, according to Phakhok Rinpoche and Chökyi Nyima Rinpoche, there is free will.
For instance, when you are sick, your sickness is the result of your karmic actions from the past. However, you have a choice, now, in terms of how you want to deal with your karmic situation. Many things are in your hands, and you decide how to proceed. This point was also addressed, for instance, in the context of karma when discussing the verses on mind training. For all of us who have received teachings, we have a real choice to either apply what we have learned or not. We can change our karma and habits. For instance, if we fall sick, we try not to become too bugged down or depressed by our disease, but see it as an opportunity to purify our karma. We let go of our concern for ourselves and try to bring to mind the suffering and sickness of other sentient beings. Then, out of compassion and loving-kindness, we mentally take their suffering upon ourselves. Through this we generate a lot of positivity, which outweighs the negativity of our karma.
Phakchok Rinpoche mentioned that he thinks that positive deeds are more powerful than negative deeds, because what is wholesome is in harmony with the nature of things.What do you think?
Heidi
[hr]
One more thing:
From a Madhyamaka point of view one can argue that conventionally the experience of free will is undeniable, whereas the ultimate transcends both presence and absence of free will.We may get a little bit into this philosophy in the context of the second excellence….
H
Hi everybody,
I understand where you are coming from. I was also raised as a catholic….
The mind has infinitely great potential. That is why we can become Buddhas. But when the mind is in delusion this means that there is hardly any limit to how painful things can become either. There are levels of pain that go beyond what any human can experience. That is what Buddhism talks about as hell. We can hear about the horrors of that kind of existence but the actual experience is more intense than what any ordinary human can feel or imagine.
Because the mind is infinitely sensitive that kind of terrible pain is unfortunately possible, and the teachings explain how it follows as the result of extremely negative conditioning of the mind. Hellish suffering is certainly not a permanent condition, but it is nevertheless a concrete possibility.
The teachings also explain how the bodhisattvas consider the innumerable beings who suffer in hells and so develop infinite compassion. To help the beings who suffer there they can, empowered by compassion, throw themselves into the deepest hell with the same sense ease and joy as when wild geese land in a beautiful lake.
As far as I can see the main issue is, as I think you are saying too, to understand how the mind creates its own future happiness and suffering, and then let the power of compassion arise as we become increasingly aware of the suffering of others.Please don’t worry….There will be many methods taught later on how to purify the negative deeds we have committed.
Heidi
